Sophocles, Antigone (c. 441BCE)
Edition used: Oxford
Public domain version: Wikisource
Faculty: Robert Crawford
Lecture date: September 30, 2013
Theme: Remake/Remodel
See also Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim.
- What, if anything, does the chorus contribute to our understanding of Sophocles’ Antigone?
- Examine the relationship between language and power in Antigone and/or Antigone’s Claim.
- What is the relationship between kinship ties and the state in Antigone?
- Why does Antigone return to the body of Polyneices?
- “So condemned, I will find a new place, / not a home, a spinster’s residence, with them, / with Polyneices—doomed young by alliance…” (p. 55). With reference to Antigone’s Claim, discuss the relationship between Antigone and Polyneices.
- “The blind must walk where others lead.” (p. 59) What significance might this line have for the play as a whole?
- Explore the role of the title character of Antigone.
See also Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim.
- Consider the significance of the following comment by Tiresias to the overall themes you identify in the play Antigone: “Nobles of Thebes,/ We two have come one common path,/ One man watching the way for both./ The blind must walk where others lead.” (59)
- It has been suggested that Antigone is “not human.” What might motivate such a view, and is it defensible?.
- What is the relationship between language and power in Antigone?
- The German philosopher Hegel regards Antigone as a tragic stalemate between two equally justifiable views. Suggest why this is, or is not, a persuasive reading.
- What does the chorus in Antigone add to the overall meaning and impact of the play?
- Why does Creon tell Haemon that it is worse to give way to a woman than a man? What does the play as a whole suggest about the place of women?
- Using the criteria of good government established by Plato in Republic, what sort of ruler would he find in Creon and/or how happy would he be to have Sophocles’ version of the story performed in the “Kalipolis” should it come into being?
- Explore the relationship between Antigone and Polyneices and its connection to her attitude to married life.
- “I come as a stranger always to the home hearth/ of humans and spirits both, / an alien only, among the living and the dead” (Sophocles 54). In what way(s) does it make sense to think of Antigone as a stranger, an alien?
- Compare the use of the imagery of the ship of state in Plato’s Republic and Sophocles’ Antigone.
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